The new leader of the Afghan Taliban vowed there will be no peace talks with his country’s government, and only more violence.
A source in the group reached through an intermediary told CNN that Mawlawi Haibatullah Akhundzada, the newly appointed leader of the terror group, also vowed to return to the militant ways adopted by late founder Mullah Omar.
Akhundzada “will bring back the era of Mullah Mohammad Omar,” the Taliban commander who led the group from its creation in 1994 until his death in 2013 with “a simple life, loyalty, and terror on enemies.”
On Wednesday, Akhundzada replaced Mullah Mohammed Akhtar Mansour, who was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan over the weekend. The group then claimed responsibility for a Wednesday suicide bombing in Kabul that killed 10 people and injured four others.
In recent months, the Taliban has also made gains against Afghan troops and bombed Kabul multiple times.
Akhundzada was the “natural choice” after Mansour, said Thomas Ruttig of the Afghanistan Analysts’ Network.
Akhundzada “was already the senior deputy to Mullah Mansour. It’s a clever choice because he is a religious scholar from the founder generation of the Taliban, and was close to Mullah Omar,” Ruttig said. He said the new leader may be able to “integrate the younger and more militant generation.”
The Taliban is a Sunni Islamic organization that operates primarily in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
According to Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the drone strike that killed Mansour undermines the peace process and “will further destabilize Afghanistan, which will have negative implications for the region.”
